This invention relates to cover sorting machines.
While the invention is subject to a wide range of applications, it is especially suited for use in a book cover sorting system and will be particularly described in that connection.
In recent times, the paperback book industry has grown significantly and now publishes hundreds of millions of paperbacks yearly. A large percentage of these paperback books, running into the hundreds of millions, are not sold and are returned to the publisher or wholesaler for reimbursements. These returns are extremely expensive to handle and difficult to store. Also, the problems of properly crediting accounts is a massive operation. One partial solution of this problem has been to return only the cover of the paperback to the publisher or wholesaler for proper crediting. In this way the difficulty in handling the physical bulk of the books is greatly reduced. However, the recognition and processing of these paperback covers still remains. In the past, cover sorting machines have been used to sort covers and recognize them so that the information can be readily accessible and useable in various ways.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,414,126 to Vulcano discloses along a conveyor of plurality of sorting stations each including a photoelectric detector which is positioned along the conveyor to ascertain the presence of a particular marking, individual to the respective station, on the cover of an oncoming book.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,511,368 to Kajitani et al discloses for example, a feeding and conveying apparatus for recording media such as envelopes and postcards wherein a plurality of stacked written mediums are successively paid out one after the other from the front end of the stock. An information item is read on the foremost written medium while it is held stationary before it is paid out and a conveyor conveys the written medium along a predetermined path according to the read out information.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,998,329 to Araya and Hashimoto discloses a card sorting apparatus and its system wherein the cards are stacked in the original order accumulated in the card hopper.
All of the above-mentioned cover sorting devices are very complicated and do not have the capability of rapidly scanning a large volume of book covers returned for credit, recognizing each title in a large library of stored classes of titles, accumulating required information with respect to such recognized titles, and transmittal of such data in a form compatible with publisher or distributor equipment and requirements.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a sorting machine which obviates some or all of the above-mentioned limitations.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a novel sorting machine which is capable of accurately sorting many different types of covers.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a sorting machine which operates very quickly and efficiently.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a sorting machine which removes covers which are stuck together or which are not recognized by the machine.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a sorting machine which shreds the covers which have been recognized.